Saturday, November 30, 2013

Sunday, October 13, 2013

I posted this song on May, 2009. Nothing changed and more people are being prescribed drugs that
alter body, mind and soul. They don't spare the children.
In Brazil there is not a single book, article or paragraph in Portuguese that approaches a single side effect.
I contact people that I know are aware but they don't wanna talk about it.

Look what they've done to my song, ma
Look what they've done to my song
Well it's the only thing that I could do half right
And it's turning out all wrong, ma
Look what they've done to my song.

Look what they've done to my brain, ma
Look what they've done to my brain
Well they picked it like a chicken bone
And I think I'm half insane, ma
Look what they've done to my song.

I wish I could find a good book to live in
Wish I could find a good book
Will if I cold find a real good book
I'd never have to come out and look
Look what they've done to my song.

It'll be all right ma, maybe it'll be okay
Well if the people are buying tears I'll be rich someday, ma
Look what they've done to my song.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Trailblazing psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, MD in his first of the series: Simple Truths About Psychiatry: Do You Have A Biochemical Imbalance? Dr. Breggin debunks the myth of biochemical imbalance and examines what is known about "mental illness." Further information may be found on Dr. Breggin's website and in his many books, including his latest: "Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and Their Families."

Saturday, August 17, 2013

I'm enrolling on a formation of psychoanalyst course.
In Brazil psychoanalysis is practiced by numerous great professionals and, of course, some not that great and even unethical.

I did psychoanalysis myself but sitting on the chair instead of the sofa is not an easy choice.
I thought a lot and, funny, suffered a lot to have the guts to come up with the conclusion that this is something I have to do.

I still cannot explain clearly. It is as if psychoanalysis has chosen me and not the opposite. I have been preparing myself to do it without noticing. I don't believe that people go to be a therapist in a very happy mood: "Yippee! Yippee! I'm going to be a therapist!"
I have an idea of what is to come and... OMY! it is not easy. The responsibility, the numerous problems people have...

I want to thank all of you who received me so well and treated me so kindly. I feel part of a group here and it empowered me to take this decision.

Friday, August 16, 2013

We are told over and over again that US is democratic or even that it is the most democratic country. The facts reveals the opposite. We have as recently the cases of Brad Manning and Edward Snowden as examples of a regime that is far from being democratic.
Other cases that are not very known involve tasering people till death like what happened to 18 years-old artist Israel Hernandez tasered in the heart till death by Miami police.

If "normal" citizens are being treated this way those who are in mental institutions don't count. Once someone is labelled a mental illness they are not considered human anymore. This is a fact.

I wrote about Alison Hymes at this post. Nothing is being done and she continues to suffer the most heinous treatment in the Western State Hospital, Virginia.
Alison has already had her condition worsened due to the treatment the Virginia's hospital is giving her in a very deep degree. They keep on treating her like an animal.
Being tortured by physicians in a hospital; receiving a treatment that is causing more harm...*
This is surreal but we are living in the most dark of all humankind ages. History will tell the story.
Alison Hymes? Until when?

I'm a Brazilian citizens and as a mental health advocate I would like to call to your attention what is happening to Alison Hymes at the From Western State Hospital.
This is the the report of one of her friends that is at Mindfreedom:

"Resident and longtime MindFreedom member Alison Hymes, on Wednesday, 7/3/13, had a re-commitment hearing. This hearing marked the 6 month, 1/2 year point, in her imprisonment at Western State Hospital in Staunton, Virginia.

The result of this hearing is that she was given another 45 days in the hospital after which she will be given another hearing. The result could have been worse as potentially she could have had to wait another 6 months for a hearing.

The bad news, according to Alison, is that the staff at the hospital are not talking about releasing her. She wishes to return to her condominium, her community, and the life she was living before imprisonment at Western State Hospital.

Talking to her over the phone it is not always easy to understand what she is saying. Her words are slurred and garbled. She claims that this is so because the hospital staff won't return her dentures to her. Dentures they took from her.

In a previous alert we claimed she was taking lamictal rather than a neuroleptic. Following a previous hearing with her treatment team this is no longer true. Apparently her doctor thought it necessary to put her back on the drug prolixin. She is receiving shots of prolixin, a long acting injectable, every two weeks. She is also still receiving a daily dose of anti-convulsion drug lamictal.

She had gained much weight since being put on seroquel, the atypical neuroleptic she was receiving during her last hospitalization, and she is very sensitive, as you can well imagine anybody would be, about this issue. She doesn't like the effects of the prolixin, she understands it is a harmful substance, with a potential for doing her a great deal of damage, and she wishes to be taken off it.

Alison was the recipient of a kidney following lithium poisoning after a previous incident of psychiatric malpractice. Her friends and allies worry that keeping her at Western State Hospital
for any length of time will only further endanger her health. She says the medical staff at Western say she needs an operation, on an ulcer, but that the hospital is slow to get around to operating.

Asked what she would tell other members of MindFreedom she said, "I need to get out as soon as possible. I need to get out.""

The treatment Alison Hymes is receiving is criminal.
I hope Alison can count on your mercy to stop being tortured this way.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

How do we know precisely what constitutes “normality” or mental illness? Conventional wisdom suggests that specially trained professionals have the ability to make reasonably accurate diagnoses. In this research, however, David Rosenhan provides evidence to challenge this assumption. What is -- or is not -- “normal” may have much to do with the labels that are applied to people in particular settings.

If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?

The question is neither capricious nor itself insane. However much we may be personally convinced that we can tell the normal from the abnormal, the evidence is simply not compelling. It is commonplace, for example, to read about murder trials wherein eminent psychiatrists for the defense are contradicted by equally eminent psychiatrists for the prosecution on the matter of the defendant’s sanity. More generally, there are a great deal of conflicting data on the reliability, utility, and meaning of such terms as “sanity,” “insanity,” “mental illness,” and “schizophrenia.” Finally, as early as 1934, {Ruth} Benedict suggested that normality and abnormality are not universal.[1] What is viewed as normal in one culture may be seen as quite aberrant in another. Thus, notions of normality and abnormality may not be quite as accurate as people believe they are.

To raise questions regarding normality and abnormality is in no way to question the fact that some behaviors are deviant or odd. Murder is deviant. So, too, are hallucinations. Nor does raising such questions deny the existence of the personal anguish that is often associated with “mental illness.” Anxiety and depression exist. Psychological suffering exists. But normality and abnormality, sanity and insanity, and the diagnoses that flow from them may be less substantive than many believe them to be.

At its heart, the question of whether the sane can be distinguished from the insane (and whether degrees of insanity can be distinguished from each other) is a simple matter: Do the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in which observers find them? From Bleuler, through Kretchmer, through the formulators of the recently revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, the belief has been strong that patients present symptoms, that those symptoms can be categorized, and, implicitly, that the sane are distinguishable from the insane. More recently, however, this belief has been questioned. Based in part on theoretical and anthropological considerations, but also on philosophical, legal, and therapeutic ones, the view has grown that psychological categorization of mental illness is useless at best and downright harmful, misleading, and pejorative at worst. Psychiatric diagnoses, in this view, are in the minds of observers and are not valid summaries of characteristics displayed by the observed.

Gains can be made in deciding which of these is more nearly accurate by getting normal people (that is, people who do not have, and have never suffered, symptoms of serious psychiatric disorders) admitted to psychiatric hospitals and then determining whether they were discovered to be sane and, if so, how. If the sanity of such pseudopatients were always detected, there would be prima facie evidence that a sane individual can be distinguished from the insane context in which he is found. Normality (and presumably abnormality) is distinct enough that it can be recognized wherever it occurs, for it is carried within the person. If, on the other hand, the sanity of the pseudopatients were never discovered, serious difficulties would arise for those who support traditional modes of psychiatric diagnosis. Given that the hospital staff was not incompetent, that the pseudopatient had been behaving as sanely as he had been out of the hospital, and that it had never been previously suggested that he belonged in a psychiatric hospital, such an unlikely outcome would support the view that psychiatric diagnosis betrays little about the patient but much about the environment in which an observer finds him.

This article describes such an experiment. Eight sane people gained secret admission to 12 different hospitals. Their diagnostic experiences constitute the data of the first part of this article; the remainder is devoted to a description of their experiences in psychiatric institutions. Too few psychiatrists and psychologists, even those who have worked in such hospitals, know what the experience is like. They rarely talk about it with former patients, perhaps because they distrust information coming from the previously insane. Those who have worked in psychiatric hospitals are likely to have adapted so thoroughly to the settings that they are insensitive to the impact of that experience. And while there have been occasional reports of researchers who submitted themselves to psychiatric hospitalization, these researchers have commonly remained in the hospitals for short periods of time, often with the knowledge of the hospital staff. It is difficult to know the extent to which they were treated like patients or like research colleagues. Nevertheless, their reports about the inside of the psychiatric hospital have been valuable. This article extends those efforts.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

I wonder how many deaths Eli-Lilly has had in it's facilities during clinical trials.
These are the deaths reported at the Zyprexa leaflet under "side effects":

"Collective data gathered from 17 placebo-controlled clinical studies (n=5106) involving the use of atypical antipsychotic agents, including olanzapine, for the treatment of behavioral disorders in the elderly patient with dementia showed a risk of death 1.6 to 1.7 times greater in the drug treated patient than in the placebo treated patient. The average length of duration for the trials was 10 weeks with the cause of death in the majority of cases, though not all, reported as either cardiovascular (e.g., heart failure, sudden death) or infectious (e.g., pneumonia) in nature. Similar results (i.e., increased risk of mortality with atypical antipsychotics) were reported in another meta-analysis involving elderly dementia patients that consisted of 15 randomized, placebo-controlled trials (n=3353) of 10 to 12 weeks in duration. Olanzapine is not approved by the FDA for use in the treatment of behavioral disorders in elderly patients with dementia.

Cerebrovascular adverse events (e.g., stroke, transient ischemic attack) which included fatalities have been reported in trials of olanzapine on elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis. There was a significantly higher incidence of cerebrovascular adverse events in patients treated with olanzapine when compared to patients treated with placebo. However, the association between the use of atypical antipsychotics (i.e., risperidone, olanzapine) and the risk of cerebrovascular events appears to be somewhat controversial. The results of a case-control study found no increased risk of cerebrovascular events in elderly patients treated with atypical antipsychotics."

The agency has not determined whether the drug caused the fatalities. "At this time, FDA is continuing to evaluate these deaths and will provide an update when more information is available," it said in a statement Tuesday.

Both patients received intramuscular injections of the drug at appropriate doses, the FDA said, but tests showed "very high olanzapine blood levels after death."

High doses are known to induce delirium, cardiopulmonary arrest, cardiac arrhythmias, and impaired consciousness ranging from sedation to coma.

The long-acting form of olanzapine was approved with a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy that requires patients to remain in the clinic for a 3-hour monitoring period and to be escorted home afterward. The requirement was imposed after some patients in clinical trials became delirious or lost consciousness shortly after receiving injections.

These events, dubbed post-injection delirium-sedation syndrome (PDSS), were traced to an unexpectedly rapid release of olanzapine into circulation leading to very high blood levels of the drug.

However, all those cases occurred within hours of injection, not days, and no deaths were attributed to the syndrome, the FDA said.

Olanzapine pamoate is approved for injection every 2-4 weeks for treating patients with schizophrenia. It is one of several long-acting formulations of "atypical" antipsychotic drugs currently available. PDSS has not been seen with those other products.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Mark and D Bunker left two good comments about the post below. I noticed that it is not clear that I'm talking about my experience when I speak to Brazilians.Take a look at my answer below.I thank you all for receiving me in such a warmth way. It would be impossible without being part of a group fighting the same war and being there when I needed backup.I just regret some disagreements that were only justified by our tiredness and frustration of always having in the back of our minds: "is it worthy? will this project lead anywhere?".We just have to forget about quick changes. What is important is raising awareness and the more people in the army the better.A lie repeated becomes truth but the truth repeated will be echoed to the right person and prevent another life being destroyed.Love to all of you..

Then where are all those Doctors, Right Here, who are 'Proving' you wrong?

They're not here, the same way they're not at my page, because they Can't prove you wrong.

In fact. the Only thing they can Prove, is that they are Frauds, Con Artists, and Blow Hards.

For the moment, let's put the Worthless, Brain Eating Drugs aside.

Even the people who've Been poisoned by these Lawless Quacks, in the main, complain that we should substitute Psycho-Social counseling 1st and foremost. Whatever we do, Stop Attacking the Psycho-Bulls**t sessions.

If Any of that crap worked, Why are people supposed to need repeat Psyco-BS sessions for Life?

If it was Worth anything, at All, it would Work Permanently in 6 months tops.

But as you and I both know, it doesn't work and it Can't work, . . . BECAUSE, . . . it's Not actually medical, it's the Idiot, Political Scientism of Atheists, Nazis, and Communists.

Here, Share This with your readers. Both of these Psychiatric Super Geniuses are on the internet picking at nits.

I agree with all you both said.
It is only when I speak to Brazilians that I have these problems.

There is nothing, nothing, nothing at the internet similar to what we find in English.

I could make this blog because of all of you. There is a group of people who are writing books - none has been translated to Portuguese -, blogging, manifesting and keep raising awareness even if things don't change.

If I started a blog in Portuguese I would have nobody but the labs commenting saying that I'm crazy and "these drugs are helping millions of people, blah blah blah...".

I only discovered the truth by researching in English.

U should have made it clear at the post that this is about nations that don't have English as language.

It is the same in French. There is not a group of French people that are united doing what is done in English.

Sometimes I think that I'm the only person bellow the Equator that is in contact with these great people who have integrity and dignity.

This is strange. I'll search more because it simply can't be.

I have a virtual friend who has a blog where he writes about the barbaric way he was treated in a mental institution.

Friday, April 19, 2013

'A pill for every ill" leads to other pills to cope with side effects;

I don't know if it is only me but I have already explained the problems of psychiatric drugs to some people and when I met them again they ask the same questions and I have the feeling that all I said was not heard.

Maybe I speak too much and might be changing topics before making a point clear. I usually have the feeling I would have to spend one week talking to someone to explain what is happening to medicine.

The problem is that people trust their doctors. I once did and who knows I would ask myself if this lunatic who is claiming that the drug I'm taking can make me suicidal is right?

As there is nothing written in Portuguese, not a single physician speaks out, and the pharmaceutical industry is omnipresent there are no sources I can give to people.

I almost have to beg to people to listen because what I have to convey might save their lives of the life of a family member.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

I've noticed that many good bloggers have stop blogging and I think we should do something.

There are some great blogs full of invaluable information that are not on Google anymore because they are not updated for more than 3 months.

I don't know what to do but we should think about something because every blog that raises awareness on the harms of psychiatric drugs is part of a strong group of people. We are in this together.

Information can save lives, Recently I took a drug for back pain that had "cariprodosol" and I felt numerous side effects. I searched, in English, - in Portuguese there is nothing - and found out that this drug has been banned first in Norway and finally from EU, The patent has already expired and we know that this is the reason they took it from the market and produced detailed information about numerous side effects.

I stop taking the pill.
I don't know what to do and I'm just raising the issue. I remember finding Rob Robinson's blog and reading what he had gone through. It helped me a lot.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Dr. David Healy published this post at hisblog and I felt like sharing.
I admire his work and I follow his blog. He is at my list of psychiatrists who are bright because they understand human condition and are not blind to other fields especially those who are from the humanities.
Most psychiatrist are illiterate. Yep! Being literate does not mean someone can read. It also means that one has the ability to read a novel and critically and analytically.

Usually those who are not insensible for other fields use literature or philosophy at their discourse from time to time.

If a doctor only pays attention on the symptom's check list and have a poor understandment of other fields they will not be a good professional for it takes other knowledge to get close to a comprehension of what patient's are reporting.

Without other fields it is impossible to see what the patient is not reporting.

Left Hanging: Suicide in Bridgend
March 12, 2013
The Figures

In the England and Wales there are roughly 5000 suicides in roughly 60 million people per year. This would until recently have led to around 2000 hangings per year, 34 hangings per million people per year, 3.5 per 100,000 people per year.
Bridgend in South Wales has a population of 40,000. The greater

Bridgend area has a population of 130,000. There should be 18 hangings per 100,000 people over a 5 year period, 24 per 130,000 per year.

In recent years however in both the US and UK there has been a rise in the number of hangings so that this mode of death now accounts for 50% of cases. If this applies in the Bridgend area, we might expect 28 hangings per 130,000 over a 5 year period, roughly 6 per year.

There were in fact 79 hangings in Bridgend between January 2007 and February 2012. The hangings continue unabated, so the true figure may be in the 90s. This means there have been 16 per year – an excess of 10 or more hangings per year.

Vanishing

Suicides There have likely been a lot more self-destructions than this in Bridgend. Coroners have considerable discretion and recently a great deal of encouragement to use narrative, open or death by misadventure verdicts rather than to record a verdict of suicide. To record a suicide verdict they should be satisfied that the person intended to kill themselves. One of the primary indicators of intent is a suicide note. In the Bridgend cases, there have been few suicide notes. This has made it easy for coroners to manage perceptions of what might be going on.

Having a narrative or open verdict can be extremely important for families. I have written reports in over 20 inquests arguing that it would be appropriate to return a narrative rather than a suicide verdict, in the case of people whose suicide has been triggered by an antidepressant.

But this use of narrative verdicts has produced a situation where suicide figures are close to worthless. The British suicide rate is comprised of cases recorded as suicides along with a proportion of narrative, open or other verdicts, with the proportion chosen down to bureaucratic whim. We do not have a self-destruction rate and absolutely no idea as to how many verdicts, either suicide or narrative, are linked to antidepressant or other drug intake.

A website antidepaware was recently set up to track deaths by suicide or misadventure or related that are related to antidepressants. It has logged over 1600 UK suicides involving antidepressants of which 43% were recorded as suicides by the coroner, 26% as narrative verdicts, 19% as open verdicts, 5% as death by misadventure and 7% as accidental.

Hanging & Kneeling

While the suicide rate has become ambiguous, it is not possible to conceal the number of hangings.

Bridgend has had an unusual number of hangings. An apparently odd feature is that these hangings have involved a lot of kneeling. The fact that many victims have been found hanging but with their feet on the ground or close to kneeling has given rise to speculation about internet or other cults, and about serial killing rather than self-destruction.

I had been exposed to relatively few SSRI suicide cases when Linda Hurcombe came to me telling me of her daughter Caitlin, who after 6 weeks on Prozac hung herself using her horses’ lanyard (see Let Them Eat Prozac).
Soon after that with colleagues I ran a healthy volunteer study designed to test how antidepressants work. In this study, two completely normal women while taking the SSRI sertraline (Zoloft) became suicidal. One of these two had vivid imagery of hanging herself.

Around this time too I got involved in the Miller case. Matt Miller was a 13 year old boy who had just changed schools and was feeling nervous. His parents prompted by the teacher brought him to a doctor who put him on Zoloft. Seven days later he hung himself in the bathroom between his parent’s bedroom and his bedroom.

Pfizer, the makers of Zoloft argued that this was not suicide but auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong. As evidence, they pointed to the fact he was not suspended several feet above the floor but had his feet on the ground, almost kneeling. They went so far as to scour the carpet in the bathroom to collect potential evidence for seminal stains.

It was Yvonne Woodley’s case in 2010 that explained the hanging issue to me – something that anyone with an interest in the area could in fact have found from Wikipedia.

Yvonne Woodley was a 42 year old woman who was having marital difficulties. She presented to her doctor with sleep problems. The doctor viewed her as being under stress, and as posing absolutely no suicide risk. She gave Yvonne citalopram. A week later the doctor noted that Yvonne was more agitated and there were fleeting thoughts of suicide – so she doubled the dose of citalopram. After a suicide attempt, she doubled it further and a short while afterwards Yvonne hung herself.

She hung herself in the attic of her house. Given the kind of person she was, the rest of her family found it unbelievable that she would have hung herself in the house with her two daughters downstairs but a common feature of SSRI suicides is the apparent lack of concern for the effect on others.

The fact that Yvonne was close to kneeling enabled the coroner to return a narrative rather than a suicide verdict. The pathologist explained that when people are weighing up the possibility of hanging themselves, wondering about it, they might put a rope in place and test themselves against it. If they do this, it is in fact very easy by putting pressure on the carotid sinuses that are in the side of the neck to slip out of consciousness and falling forward to end up asphyxiated. If you have begun with your feet on the ground you can end up kneeling or close to kneeling.The First Cases in Bridgend

Dale Crole, 18 Found hanged, 5 January 2007 David Dilling, 19 Found hanged in his home, February 2007 Thomas Davies, 20 Found hanged from a tree, 25 February 2007 Allyn Price, 21 Found hanged in his bedroom, April 2007 James Knight, 26 Found hanged at his home, 17 May 2007 Leigh Jenkins, 22 Found hanged, June 2007 Zachery Barnes, 17 Found hanged from a washing line, August 2007 Jason Williams, 21 Found hanged at home, 23 August 2007 Andrew O’Neill, 19 Found hanged at home, September 2007 Luke Goodridge, 20 Found hanged, November 2007 Liam Clarke, 20 Found hanged, 27 December 2007 Gareth Morgan, 27 Found hanged, 5 January Natasha Randall, 17 Found hanged, 17 January Angie Fuller, 18 Found hanged, 4 February Kelly Stephenson, 20 Found hanged on 14 February while on holiday Nathaniel Pritchard, 15 Kelly’s cousin, found hanged, died 15 February (keep reading)

Thursday, February 07, 2013

She would be twenty eight years old if she had not volunteered to join Cymbalta's Eli-Lilly urinary incontinence clinical trial in early January, 2004 in a clinic at Indiana University Medical Center.
In February, 7 her body was found. She hung herself with a scarf from a shower rod at Eli-Lily's facilities.

She was a healthy woman who just joined the trial to make a little money. Her picture is at the top left.